The EU’s Normative Power – Its Greatest Strength or its Greatest Weakness?
Journal
Atlantic Community
Type
journal article
Date Issued
2012
Author(s)
Abstract
The growing influence of the European Union (EU) on the international political arena and at the same time its “particular kind” of characteristics as an international player appears to be a widely debated issue among various scholars of social sciences over the last decades. During this period a wide range of theories and concepts have attributed various epithets to the EU and tried to explain its power in different, sometimes controversial ways. Consequently the descriptions of the EU in international relations vary from it being a “Kantian paradise” (Kagan, 2004), a “vanishing mediator” (Manners, 2006:.174) to “an economic giant, a political dwarf, and a military worm” (Eyskens, 1991). For some scholars the concept of the EU goes beyond the bold epithets and is analyzed from the critical-social theoretical perspective, where the latter was hypothesized as an actor that spread its own norms beyond its borders and whose power lies in its system of values and forms of relations with the outer world (Manners, 2002). Having said this, the article tries to focus on this theoretical approach while addressing this “unique political animal” (Piris, 2010: 337).
Language
English
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
HSG Profile Area
SHSS - Kulturen, Institutionen, Maerkte (KIM)
Refereed
No
Subject(s)
Division(s)
Eprints ID
252357
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EUNormativePower.pdf
Size
179.03 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
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